1991 Newspaper Article

1991 Newspaper Article

There is no date or newspaper name with this article. I am assuming that it was written for the Copemish Centennial and that it was printed in the Manistee Advocate.

Copemish – The First Village

A hundred years ago on February 10, 1891, Copemish elected a village council and became an incorporated village in Manistee County. The irony of this first is that Copemish was also the newest village in the county of 1891.

Surveyors for the Toledo, Ann Arbor & Northern Michigan and the Manistee & Northeastern railroads had determined the location for the future village by fixing a point where their two lines intersected. The first residents of Copemish had arrived in the summer of 1889 to serve the needs of construction crews for both the railroads. The surveyors concluded their work by plating a portion of the railroad owned property at the intersection of the tracks as a village.

Copemish developed very rapidly due to the fact it was a transportation community built in a virtual vacuum. The pioneers of the community had had to walk 30 to 50 miles for all their outside needs; politics, legal problems, medical help, supplies, grist mills and often even churches. Produce from the homesteads had to be freighted to market a like distance unless they could find a closer logging camp. Consequently, with the arrival of not one but two railroads in 1889, the local people rushed to use the transportation center and the junction quickly became a sizable community.

State law specified that whenever a community of more than 300 people lived in an area of less than a square mile they could petition the county Board of Supervisors to become an incorporated village. Copemish met this requirement by 1891 (318 people in one square mile) and thus 15 residents filed a petition with the Supervisors at their organizational meeting in 1891. The petition was granted on January 7, 1891, with the actual incorporated village to commence after an election of officers on February 10th.

Following the election the Manistee Times-Sentinel carried the following proud announcement from a Copemish correspondent:

“The village of Copemish contains about four hundred inhabitants, and
and was incorporated Tuesday, by electing the village officers. There
were three tickets in the field – Citizens, Village and Union – and the contest
was a spirited one. The Citizens Ticket was victorious, the following
officers being elected: President, C.B. Caniff; Clerk, Walter W. Gibb;
Treasurer, George H. Marzloff; Trustees, James B. Loshbough, David
Barry, Charles H. Taylor, John Tweddle, Cassius R. Bunker, Columbus
W. Kingsley; Assessor, David A. Cornell; Street Commissioner, Thomas
A. Fralick; and Constable, William Fenner.

“Copemish is a little over a year old and one of the most enterprising and
progressive villages in northern Michigan. The buildings are of a
substantial character, and everything about the village has the air of life
and vigor. The $8000 company grist mill is one of the finest in the state,
being supplied with all the modern improvements. It has given satisfaction
in every instance, and farmers come twenty and thirty miles with their
grists. Many other enterprises in and about the village are worthy of
mention.”